Elon Musk reveals new ‘X’ brand to switch Twitter’s blue hen

Elon Musk has unveiled a brand new “X” brand to switch Twitter’s well-known blue hen as he follows by means of with a significant rebranding of the social media platform he purchased for $44 billion final yr.

The X began showing on the high of the desktop model of Twitter on Monday, however the hen was nonetheless dominant throughout the smartphone app. At Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco, in the meantime, staff have been seen eradicating the long-lasting hen and brand Monday till police confirmed up and stopped them as a result of they didn’t have the correct permits and didn’t tape off the sidewalk to maintain pedestrians protected if something fell.
As of early afternoon, the “er” on the finish of Twitter remained seen.

The haphazard erasure of each the bodily and digital remnants of Twitter’s previous have been in some ways typical of the chaotic approach Musk has run the corporate since his reluctant buy.
“It’s the end of an era, and a clear signal that the Twitter of the past 17 years is gone and not coming back,” said Jasmine Enberg, an analyst with Insider Intelligence. “But the writing was on the wall: Musk has been vocal about transforming Twitter into platform X from the start, and Twitter was already a shell of its former self.”
It is one more change that Musk has made since buying Twitter that has alienated customers and turned off advertisers, leaving the microblogging web site weak to new threats, together with rival Meta’s new text-based app Threads that instantly targets Twitter customers.

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Musk had requested followers for brand concepts and selected one, which he described as minimalist Artwork Deco, saying it “certainly will be refined.” He changed his personal Twitter icon with a white X on a black background and posted an image of the design projected on Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters.
“And shortly we will bid adieu to the twitter model and, step by step, all of the birds,” Musk tweeted Sunday.
The X.com web domain now redirects users to Twitter.com, Musk said.
“I can’t say I’m surprised, but I think it’s a very selfish decision,” said Hannah Thoreson of Baltimore, Maryland, who’s used Twitter since 2009 for work and personal posts.
“There are so many small businesses and so many nonprofits and so many government agencies and things like that all around the world that have relied on Twitter for many years to push their message and reach people,” she stated. “They usually all have the Twitter icon on all the things from their web site to their enterprise playing cards.”
Altering all this prices money and time, she added, to not point out the confusion that comes with a beforehand unknown model title.
“I mean, do you want to get rid of the Coca-Cola brand if you’re Coca-Cola? Why would you do that?” stated Thoreson, who now primarily makes use of Mastodon.
Musk, CEO of Tesla, has lengthy been fascinated with the letter X and had already renamed Twitter’s company title to X Corp. after he purchased it in October. In response to questions on what tweets could be referred to as when the rebranding is completed, Musk stated they’d be referred to as Xs.
The billionaire can be CEO of rocket firm Area Exploration Applied sciences Corp., generally often called SpaceX. And he began a synthetic intelligence firm this month referred to as xAI to compete with ChatGPT. In 1999, he based a startup referred to as X.com, an internet monetary providers firm now often called PayPal.
Moreover, he calls one among his sons, whose mom is singer Grimes, “X.” The kid’s precise title is a set of letters and symbols.
Musk’s Twitter buy and rebranding are a part of his technique to create what he is dubbed an “ everything app ” much like China’s WeChat, which mixes video chats, messaging, streaming and funds. Musk has made quite a lot of drastic modifications since taking on Twitter, together with a shift to specializing in paid subscriptions, however he doesn’t at all times observe by means of on his attention-grabbing new coverage pronouncements.
Linda Yaccarino, the longtime NBC Common government Musk tapped to be Twitter CEO in Could, posted the brand new brand and weighed in on the change, writing on Twitter that X could be “the future state of unlimited interactivity — centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking — creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities.”
However advert business analysts have been much less sure about X’s prospects.
“Musk supporters will likely celebrate the rebrand, but it’s a gloomy day for many Twitter users and advertisers,” Enberg stated. “Twitter’s corporate brand is already heavily intertwined with Musk’s personal brand, with or without the name X, and much of Twitter’s established brand equity has already been lost among users and advertisers.”
Some predicted the brand new title will confuse a lot of Twitter’s viewers, which has already been souring on the social media platform following Musk’s different modifications, together with limiting the variety of tweets customers can learn every day. The brand new threshold is a part of an $8-per-month subscription service Musk rolled out earlier this yr in an try to spice up Twitter income.
Whether or not advertisers will ever return is dependent upon how profitable the rebranding is and whether or not Musk is ready to accomplish his purpose of making an “everything app.” That continues to be to be seen, stated advert professional Mark DiMassimo.
“Advertisers care about what they’re buying. So if his strategies work, I don’t think advertisers could care less about what he calls it,” DiMassimo stated.
“I think changing the name is just a way for him to say, ‘Stop having Twitter expectations, this is a new thing, judge it as a new thing,’” he added. “And you know, that only works if the new thing works.”
Twitter customers additionally identified that few folks consult with Alphabet, Google’s mum or dad firm since 2015. Fb renamed itself Meta in 2021, however its assortment of apps — Instagram, WhatsApp and Fb — nonetheless retain their very own manufacturers and logos.
Twitter’s recognizable blue hen brand went reside greater than a decade in the past in 2012, changing an earlier hen brand forward of the corporate’s Wall Road debut as a publicly traded firm.
“I’m sad to see it go. It had a great run,” stated the brand’s designer, Martin Grasser. “However 11 years, 12 years is actually lengthy for a company identification to stay round. It feels just like the platform is altering they usually have a brand new route and it is sensible” that they would pick a new logo to signal those changes.
Watch Twitter X: Elon Musk rebrands Twitter to X; replaces iconic blue bird logo